How Carson Olinger Acquired 200+ Units Using Creative Financing

Carson Olinger (00:00)
If we’re analyzing an opportunity and someone just wants the seller to make money, there’s not a lot of motivation there. Not to say that it’s wrong, it’s just we’re not gonna find the value that we need there. So we are very particular when we’re analyzing a property to find out what the seller is ultimately looking for. What’s their problem? Can we solve that problem for? It might simply be that the property is just too much for them to handle. And if we can take that property off and maybe even include them in on the cash flow,

as a limited partner with a non-equity position through a seller financing opportunity, then they can still receive the cash flow that they were expecting because they might be in retirement, they might be divesting out, and they just want to dump out the money. Like, hey, I want five million for the property. And I’ll say, well, what are you going to do with five million or two million that you can’t do with less? Do you really need all of that? There’s tax consequences. There’s all kinds of things. You want to leave a legacy. Maybe your kids don’t

want to do this thing. So what we do is we’ll come in and structure that maybe even give them a little bit more than they’re asking for, but on our terms so that the seller financing still provides them cash flow. can even structure that into their trust. And then sometimes we can even deal with the taxes on the other side for them to help them with an accountant that they might not otherwise have. A lot of these guys are back in the napkin kind of sellers.

Michelle Kesil (01:58)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Carson Olinger, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate and flipping and acquisition space. So really glad to have you joining us here, Carson. I really think our listeners are going to

take something away from how you’re approaching your acquisition and your deals and scaling. So yeah, let’s dive into all of that.

Carson Olinger (02:34)
Well thank you for having me, Michelle. I appreciate the opportunity to come on. I appreciate the time and the audience that you guys represent. bring a lot of value into the real estate space. So thanks again.

Michelle Kesil (02:47)
Yeah,

absolutely. So first off, for people who may not be familiar with you and your world yet, just give us the short version of what is your main focus these days.

Carson Olinger (02:59)
Well, I’m based in the Atlanta metro area. I’ve been here close to 30 years and I started my real estate journey back in 2017. So really not too long ago. And my quick story is I didn’t have any money. I got into the single family space and started wholesaling and quickly scaled up through my goal strategies into fixing and flipping and then buying and holding with a duplex or two, some single family homes and then ultimately into the multifamily space, which represents

mobile home parks and apartment complexes. And now here in middle of 2025, we’ve got just shy of 200 cash flowing doors across about seven or eight properties throughout the southeast, primarily in Georgia.

Michelle Kesil (03:43)
Wow, yeah, that’s great. And what has been like the key to keeping that machine running smoothly in your business?

Carson Olinger (03:51)
Well, the key I think is understanding the operations. You know, we also self manage. So when I was looking at this and how we scale up credibility falls into the mix. Quite honestly, when you’re looking for capital externally, people want to know that you’re not just some guy that’s flipping a house. You’re a guy that’s actually embedded in the operations. You know, the mechanics financially of the deal and we self operate. So I run all the operations as well as own the company.

and I took one person on, now I got two, now I got three, and they run the day-to-day operations, which also allows us to keep our pulse on the expenditures associated with operations, and we can do that quite effectively. So when we go to solicit capital from our limited partners to try and scale into a larger acquisition, we can do so not only from an advantage of being able to self-manage.

but also represent to our limited partners the ability to understand what’s going on. It’s not some third party group that we hope is doing it right. We understand what it takes and where the profit centers are and what to watch out for. So our operations has been more or less the focus on our growth because it allows us to not only represent credibility externally, but also understand the exact workings of each operation, whether it’s a wholesale deal, a fix and flip on us,

single family or the day-to-day operations of a 90 unit mobile home park or apartment complex.

Michelle Kesil (06:10)
Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned like the acquisition process. Can you share more about how that works for you? I know when we talked a little bit before you said you have a creative strategy that I think the listeners can benefit in hearing more about.

Carson Olinger (06:25)
Right, so we focus on value add. We look for value add in opportunities, which usually means, and it translates to, a property that’s somewhat in distress. It might need additional increase in vacancy. It might be poorly managed. We look behind the numbers. I handle most of the underwriting. I’ve got a couple of general partners I work with that help with that as well. And the three of us can kind of delve into the numbers and look behind the cap rate.

that might not be real exciting on the front end. We look behind the curtain, if you will, and say, wow, their operation is a little bit heavy on the employees or they’re spending more money on just day-to-day operations where we can run it and self-manage it for a lot cheaper. And we might be able to cut a 42 % operating budget down to 35. And so that then translates into better cap rates. So a deal on the front end might not look real attractive, but we’ll get behind the curtain, as you will.

see what we can do.

And then the value added is that we want to cash flow on day one. We’re not looking to force appreciate something only and then simply say, hey, we bought it at 20 million and we hope that it’s going to get to 30 million in five years. That’s great. How can we cash flow from day one? So we can present a pretty good IRR to our limited partners out of the gate because they’re going to want to get a return on their money from day one. So we’re always looking at that as opposed to building

something new and just stabilizing it and then trying to get in and out the door within a period of time. I think the long-term operations and the cash flow is critical to weathering the storms that we’re going to ultimately face and we go in very conservatively. I’m pretty strong in deal architecture. That’s one thing I love to do is when I analyze how can we get this and leverage other people’s money, not necessarily LPs, but banking money.

money

that’s already on the table, seller financing and those things to keep our operating costs and our debt down.

Michelle Kesil (08:26)
Yeah, amazing. Can you expand a bit more on that deal architecture? Because I think that a lot of the people listening maybe are earlier in their journey and yeah, could really help them out.

Carson Olinger (08:38)
Sure, I’d be happy to. I always focus on motivation.

If we’re analyzing an opportunity and someone just wants the seller to make money, there’s not a lot of motivation there. Not to say that it’s wrong, it’s just we’re not gonna find the value that we need there. So we are very particular when we’re analyzing a property to find out what the seller is ultimately looking for. What’s their problem? Can we solve that problem for? It might simply be that the property is just too much for them to handle. And if we can take that property off and maybe even include them in on the cash flow,

as a limited partner with a non-equity position through a seller financing opportunity, then they can still receive the cash flow that they were expecting because they might be in retirement, they might be divesting out, and they just want to dump out the money. Like, hey, I want five million for the property. And I’ll say, well, what are you going to do with five million or two million that you can’t do with less?

Do you really need all of that? There’s tax consequences. There’s all kinds of things. You want to leave a legacy. Maybe your kids don’t

want to do this thing. So what we do is we’ll come in and structure that maybe even give them a little bit more than they’re asking for, but on our terms so that the seller financing still provides them cash flow. can even structure that into their trust. And then sometimes we can even deal with the taxes on the other side for them to help them with an accountant that they might not otherwise have. A lot of these guys are back in the napkin kind of sellers.

They don’t have a broader market. They’re usually the guy

guys

that fall in between the easy to address acquisition of 500 to a million and they’re above that. But the hedge funds don’t want to touch it because they’re below 20 million. So they don’t have a lot of qualified buyers. And so we walk them through how we can take over their property, still provide them with cash flow. But at the same time, we’re getting a benefit by not having to go out and get as much capital because they’re floating that.

and they still receive a pretty good interest rate, but it provides us better than market interest rate so our limited partners can then capitalize not only on the equity position, but on the daily cash flow, the monthly cash flow, the quarterly cash flow.

So we look at all of that and it boils down really to motivation. So for the new guys out there, if you’re looking for these opportunities, look for the motivated seller. Why are they selling? Find out what their need is, what their problem is and become a problem solver. And that’s kind of how we found a lot of these opportunities. If I can expand upon that just a little more, one of the ways we found some of these ⁓ larger opportunities, they started off small.

Michelle Kesil (11:50)
Yeah.

Carson Olinger (11:56)
One thing that we did was we went and looked the dispossessories up, which in essence is a legal term for the evictions. That’s all public information and the counties have those. And quite honestly, they were in the single family space and there were LLCs that had a trailer park or a trailer unit that they were evicting. And we’d call and say, hey, you’ve got a unit. that something you want to sell? Not realizing it was part of a larger property. And they would say, well, I want to sell the whole property.

property

and then it opened up dialogue and we were able to take down two or three mobile home parks of some substance and do owner financing on those so that our carry costs are really low when it comes to debt service. So, you one thing you’re looking at is a DSCR ratio of about 1.25 and we’re usually coming in at like 1.3 to 1.4 utilizing owner financing because it lowers our debt service so well. So that becomes very attractive for cashflow.

which translates into attracting, quite honestly, limited partners that want to get in on a high rate of return.

Michelle Kesil (13:01)
Yeah, that’s so valuable. Thank you for sharing that. So every operator I know had a moment in business where maybe things got more real. Maybe you had a deal go sideways or you just had to pivot fast. Would you mind sharing one of those experiences for you?

Carson Olinger (13:17)
Sure, I’ve tried to focus on what happened in the war story, if you will. We haven’t ever lost money on a property, so don’t have any that are like that. That might just be because I’m very targeted and conservative in my approach, which translates well into success. But I think that reckoning moment or that scary moment was recognizing

the fact that I needed to scale up, but not knowing how to do that. I was like, I need to go to that next level and I don’t have anybody, it’s just me. And I can’t afford to pay anybody right now because I don’t have the revenue I need to do that, right? It’s like the cart and the horse or the chicken and the egg, which came first. And it was kind of, it froze me and I was kind of stuck on the bench going, how do I move forward? And I can’t remember the name of the book that I read, but it said,

actually having those thoughts. If you’re thinking I need somebody but I can’t afford it, you’re already six months past needing that person. And that struggle was

one of the toughest ones to do, which was to say, okay, I don’t have the revenue, but it’s going to free me up to go and find their revenue if I can get myself away from the day-to-day operations. So I hired an operations person to handle my day-to-day operations, because at that point we had 40 units and it was getting beyond me. I just couldn’t handle, I was just getting consumed by it. So that was a huge relief. And then it allowed me to scale up and then I recognized, okay, we got to put the people in place

in order to scale up. you’re making the investment in the company and you’re sitting there looking at the cash flow that you’re having to now divert into a salary and that’s a hard pill to swallow. But at the end of the day, if you’re thoughtful enough about it and you plan it out, that fear or that challenge then becomes a success. And I think there was a moment there about four years ago, almost four and a half years ago that I was frozen in time going, my gosh, what do I do?

but in terms of a ⁓ dumpster fire, like a bad war story, we really haven’t had those. We’ve had our day-to-day challenges of occupancy and, know, just funneling, you know, our proceeds back into the property. So that’s been, you know, something that we’ve tried to deal with, that’s just part of growing a value added opportunity. It’s, it’s about the long-term focus and the strategy, whether that’s a two year, three year or four year strategy.

We focus on that and try and get to it.

Michelle Kesil (16:30)
Yeah, absolutely that long term vision is so important. So let me ask you this, what are you most focused on solving or scaling next?

Carson Olinger (16:41)
I’m actually focused on solving other people’s problems as I’ve alluded to. So I’m always searching for that. So what that translates to is acquisitions, focusing on growth. A lot of people try and put a dollar figure out there. We’re not necessarily looking for a dollar figure. We’re looking for opportunities that make sense. And that needs to translate to something tangible. Otherwise you’re just shooting in the dark. mean, it has to be something you can measure, right? Any goal that’s worth having has to have

some measurability to it. It has to be realistic. So we’re focused on doors. We’re trying to grow doors. And through our growth to this point, we recognize that we don’t want small opportunities because they just don’t represent the long-term growth, especially anything smaller than 15, 20 units.

It just consumes itself from day to day for too long. We need something that, you know, 40, 50, 60, 75 units is kind of where we want to start, but we’re open to going up to 400 units. And those have their own challenges because now you’re going to have on-site employees, which we haven’t yet breached. We haven’t got to that point yet. So right now we’re trying to look for those 30 to 70 unit opportunities that don’t necessarily need somebody on site like an actual

Manager on site where we have an office. We don’t want to do that yet We want to scale up now. It doesn’t mean we won’t take one down We will do that. We made some offers on some large 380 plus units. They didn’t work out through to our negotiations, but we just wouldn’t do it on our terms, but That’s where we’re going. We’re scaling up. We’re looking for partners We’re looking for limited partners to come in with a strong equity position and IRR of 15

plus over a mid-range three to five year exit strategy so that they can make money, we can grow, and we can all profit from this and then turn this in to a long-term cash flowing proposition for those that want to stay or for us long-term if we cash out or refinance.

Michelle Kesil (18:43)
Yeah, that’s such an exciting vision and I love that it’s incorporating many people that it can benefit from. So that’s always so valuable to support others and grow and collaborate together.

Carson Olinger (18:57)
We found that when we bring opportunities to the market, we’re not trying to sell it. The idea is that…

People want to get into it, right? Because the value’s there, it’s obvious. We’re leaving a lot of meat on the bone for those investors to make it attractive to get into those opportunities. And we’re willing to sacrifice some of that equity because we’re either gonna do one of two things. We’re either gonna refinance at some point to get those limited partners the returns that we promised at the timeframes that we suggested, or we’re gonna sell the property in 1099 or 1039

into another acquisition. So the exit strategy is there. It’s just a matter of what we’re gonna do with it. Do we wanna hold onto it long term and provide that limited partner with what he wants in that timeframe or does he wanna stay in it or even she wanna stay in it for a longer period of time as a general partner? So we provide those opportunities to look at. But at the same time, I alluded to multiple streams of income in our pre-interview.

One reason I got into wholesaling single-family was the easy barrier. There was very little barrier to entry, but then it translated into flipping, which was bigger money, and then into single-family, but then the geographies of those get spooked, and you have harder times to deal with that. I apologize. So the single-family market has its niche, but the multi-family arena is where we want to be. But…

We’re still wholesaling. We’ve got people that do that for us. We’ve got flips that we’re involved with because that represents some additional capital. And we still have some smaller single families that we want to hold onto just because if we need to sell something because we need to hit a cash, it’s easier to sell a single family home than it is a $5 million apartment complex when you need to do it quickly. And then you’re also not giving up a lot of that income when you do so. having that product mix in your portfolio is important, but also having the different income

continuing is critical to allow for the roller coaster ride that real estate represents from time to time, right? So knowing how to do that, creating it long-term vision is important and the multiple streams of income I think is critical for longevity in the business because then you’re not forced to make poor decisions. You have income coming in which we’ve done very, very well.

Michelle Kesil (21:13)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s such an important note to hit. And I think that’s going to be really valuable for people that are looking to level up on their journey.

Awesome. So when it comes to building relationships and growing your network, what do you feel has made the biggest difference for you?

Carson Olinger (21:33)
branding myself, all right? Who am I? So a lady once told me a long time ago, she goes, your brain is just an extra muscle in your head. You’ve got to…

put your logo out there. You’ve got to be in front of people. You got to show the value that you’re going to bring to whatever their equation is so they’ll remember you. So when I first started, I went on to a free site called Meetup and I just found every single real estate investment association that was in the area. And I was going to two to three, sometimes four of these a week.

and just shaking hands. And at the time I didn’t know a lot. I really didn’t know much about real estate other than I wanted to get into it. And I was asking all the silly questions, you know, what does LTV mean? What is ROI mean? What is all these terms? What do they mean? And I learned because I asked questions. And when I did that, I created relationships because people want to share their experiences. And if you listen, you’ve got two ears and one mouth. If you listen more than you speak,

then you’re going to learn. And if you have the mentality of I want to learn more, you’re gonna bring value back to whoever you’re speaking to. And I don’t care if it’s Robert Kiyosaki or some of the big guys that I previously mentioned.

They’re always learning too, and they can learn from you. They can learn from anyone because we’ve walked in shoes that they haven’t. And they may not learn as much as you might learn from them, but they’ll pick something up because they’re smart in that area. They know what they’re doing, they have a strategy, and they’re looking for value. What value are you gonna bring to me, and I can bring value to you. And in that reciprocal relationship,

you will grow your network, right? And you’re constantly having to grow your network because the more you know, the more you need to learn because the more you need to share. So I found that my network has changed. They say you’re the result or the, ⁓ what’s the word I’m looking for? It alludes me right now, but you are the, what’s that?

Michelle Kesil (23:39)
Byproduct?

Carson Olinger (23:42)
the by-product, thank you, of the five people you surround yourself with, right? So you evolve from your high school relationships to your college relationships to your business relationships and then you start learning more about what you need because you identify your weaknesses and you seek that out and your five people that you surround yourself with continually grows because what you find is they challenge you, right? I used to play racquetball quite a bit and I would beat people all the time and I thought I was great and I said, ⁓

always winning. I need to get somebody that’s gonna beat me and I found a guy that just beat me down. I mean obviously I could never win and but I got better and then over time we were you know he’d win one I’d win one he’d win two I’d win one and I got better and better because he was better than I was.

but I learned from him, he challenged me. And that’s anything in life. So your network is your net worth. And you’ve heard that before, I’m not making that up, but it’s true. You surround yourself with these people, you seek them out, you give more than you receive, and it’ll come back to you. I’m a Christian and I believe that people will give you their best if you’re honest with them. I don’t get burned a lot because I can read people well and I’m honest.

I have integrity. I do what I say. I say what I do. And in this world, I put it in writing too. It’s always in contract, right? But my handshake is it. I mean, if I shake your hand and tell you it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. I don’t go back on my word. Why? Money’s going to happen. It will.

Michelle Kesil (25:04)
Yeah.

Carson Olinger (25:14)
But relationships will last and your credibility is your business card. You’re going to pass from person to person and starting out, meet as many people as you can, get in front of them and bring value to their life. When I was on Facebook trying to do that, I didn’t have any deals to say, hey, look at what I did because that’s what Facebook’s all about, right? So I’d read an article and I’d say, hey, this is really interesting article. Look at page three. It addresses this issue going on in our city and I’d bring value and highlight that and people would give feedback.

presented value, content, even though it wasn’t mine, I presented it. But at the same time, I put my logo in their face, my name in their face. And so they remembered who I was. And then I’m meeting people and go, I’ve seen you or I saw you on Facebook or you’re in this group or whatever. And that’s how I did it. And now it’s paid off in spades. I’ve got an enormous network, which is continually growing. And I would not be where I am if it wasn’t for the people

that I’ve been surrounded with.

Michelle Kesil (26:12)
Yeah, relationships are everything, so thank you. So before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out, connect, collaborate, or learn from you, where is the best place for them to reach you?

Carson Olinger (26:14)
Yes.

Well,

my email is the best. They can reach me at Carson, C-A-R-S-O-N at Cap City.

EG that’s cap is in capital city is in city E is an equity G as in group Carson at cap city EG dot com they can call me directly I’ll give you my cell phone it is 6 7 8 4 7 8 2 2 3 0 if they want to check me out I’m on Facebook I’m on Instagram I’m not as active as I used to be my website is Cap City EG dot com that’s another thing I’m

to update. I just haven’t had time to keep up with it. It’s more word of mouth and in person, but if you want to fill out the form there and reach out to me through my website, that’s capcityeg.com. I’d be more than happy to do that as well. So those are the best ways to reach out to me. I’m always willing to expand my network. Even outside of Georgia, we’re active in the Southeast and continually looking for limited partnerships on acquisitions that we’re doing. We’re trying to grow our business.

And we want to make other people money in doing so and we’d love to chat

Michelle Kesil (27:33)
Well, listen, I appreciate your time story and your perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing things and innovating in this new way. So thank you for being here.

Carson Olinger (27:45)
Well thank you Michelle, I appreciate the opportunity and hopefully we can do this again sometime soon. Thank you for the time.

Michelle Kesil (27:51)
Yes, and for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Carson who are out here building real businesses and we’ll see you all in the next